


Exception

by Roadstergal



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anal Sex, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mindfuck, Transsexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:42:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some forgeries require a little more work than others.  A story that takes place before the events of the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the inimitable Kahvi for the beta.

The train rocked back and forth, jarringly, loudly, Cobb practically yelling in Arthur's ear to be heard over the racket of cheap metal wheels on an ill-maintained track. The ex-Soviet train was nothing like the sleek, silent marvels of Germany and Japan, but that was just part of the territory. Arthur knew how to deal with territory.

"They contacted me three days ago," Cobb said, his voice burring in time to the jostle of the traincar. "He's made more overtures, this time to a group linked to Al-Quaeda. Our employers are pretty eager to find out where he's stashed the nukes."

Arthur nodded. "I've got a summary. Do you really want to talk about it here?"

Cobb looked around at the rough-looking men at the other end of the car; they were deep in a loud discussion. "I think we're fine."

Arthur rattled off the overview quickly. He had been given less than a week and nothing more than a name and location, but that was par for the course, and he had found out enough. "Ivan Yevedovitch. Former Soviet Army colonel. Parents both deceased, no siblings. No spouse and no emotional attachments to speak of; he likes his women diverse and young. Sees prostitutes regularly, none over the age of 25. He's HIV positive, likely because of that penchant, and gets antiretrovirals - along with various flavors of methamphetamine and generic Viagra - via the black market. He finances all this by selling state secrets and, of course, ex-Soviet nukes. He's a good Russian, he loves his vodka. If we hit him after his regular Friday-night binge, we likely won't need sedatives."

"Good," Cobb nodded. He turned his gaze back to the window, looking intently at the landscape that flew by outside. "We'll pick up Nash and Eames in Talas, and make our plans. Empty buildings are fairly easy to come by, there."

"Eames?" Arthur asked, sharply. This was about as straightforward a job as they could have - the information hardly deeply private, the man soused, weak from a plethora of fronts. Eames would mean splitting the fee yet another way. And dealing with the man's infuriating insouciance, some part of him added. He got under Arthur's skin like no other.

"Yea, I thought we might need a forger. It sounds like the best way to go might be that 'underage hooker' angle."

"You're going to make Eames into a prostitute?" Arthur could not keep a little grin off of his face.

"It might be one option, yes." Cobb was businesslike - he was always businesslike, these days, it seemed, no space for humor or delight on his face. It had been this way ever since Mal offed herself - well, no matter. Arthur was no longer the stoic one in their partnership.

They exited the train on the outskirts of Kara Balta. Arthur carried his suitcase with his laptop, a few changes of clothing, and his core collection of electronics. Cobb's plain rucksack held even less. Nash would have the most necessary suitcase, with the business inside of it, when he arrived. Eames, Arthur thought sourly, would have local currency in small bills and a gross of condoms.

"Overland time," Cobb murmured in Arthur's ear, over the hissing of the air brakes. "We have a Lada Niva waiting in the parking lot." He looked at Arthur's annoyed face. "What was I supposed to get, a Jeep and get shot by thieves? You drive."

* * *

Talas could not even be a one-horse town, Arthur decided. They must rent a horse when occasion called, and do without the rest of the time.

It had its picturesque parts, however, especially the small park in the center of the town. Needless to say, the area where they finally stopped was far less picturesque and far more run-down.

"I'll take this to the airport to pick up Nash," Cobb said, sliding into the driver's seat as Arthur hopped out. Arthur was contemplating how the place could have an airport suitable for anything larger than a pigeon as Cobb continued. "You go to the tavern in the city center and meet Eames. We'll rendezvous at the coordinates I sent earlier. Take a roundabout route..."

Arthur nodded - all of this was routine, but there was nothing wrong with a little extra clarity. He watched Cobb drive off, then turned to walk towards the center of town.

He pulled his hat down farther over his face, but he still looked very much out of place in this town. Worst of all, he did not speak Kyrgyz. He debated speaking Russian, but that might not go over well, and if he played the French tourist, folk might be more loose-lipped in Russian around him. He did indeed get a few hard looks from passers-by as he entered the tavern.

The tavern was as quiet as a tavern should be this early in the morning. A few old men sat around, two playing a very intense game of chess in the corner, slamming the pieces down hard enough to make the table jump with every move. The bar itself had only one figure - a broad-shouldered, dark-haired one, a figure that no doubt thought itself devilishly handsome, to sit like that.

"Salut," Arthur said, just loudly enough for any eavesdroppers, as he sat next to Eames. "Comment allez-vous?"

"Very romantic, but I don't speak French, darling," Eames replied, and Arthur sighed.

"Good morning, my friend," he said, affecting a moderate French accent. He ordered a vodka from the bartender in halting Russian.

"You're so dramatic," Eames sighed as he sipped at his own drink.

"Moi?" Arthur asked innocently, downing his shot and fighting the urge to hurl it back up. The local brew went down his throat like drain cleaner. "Come, my friend, I take you to hotel," he choked out, managing the fake accent through his choking.

"Lightweight," Eames replied, grinning, as he finished his own drink. "Don't you want to stay here a bit, _mon ami_ , before going back to our hotel for our noontime bouts of sex?"

Eames no doubt thought he was clever, and it got on Arthur's tits like nothing else. "Think of me while you jerk off all you want, it doesn't mean we've had sex," he muttered back, and Eames laughed heartily as Arthur put money on the bar and stood.

They took a scenic route indeed, walking through the square, doubling back and cutting into alleys to make sure they were not followed. Eames walked with his hands casually thrust in his pockets, not so much as a rucksack slung over his shoulder.

"Don't you have any luggage?" Arthur asked, and Eames shook his head with a grin.

"You folk take care of the necessities of the job, so I prefer to travel light. I don't need fresh-pressed suits for every day of the week when I'm working." He looked meaningfully at Arthur's suitcase. As if Arthur did not pack lightly indeed, he thought irately.

"If I'm going to spend three days in the middle of nowhere, I want to have clean underwear while I'm doing it," Arthur replied testily, ducking into the small wooden stockhouse that stood at the GPS coordinates he had been given.

Nash and Cobb were already there, unpacking the material that Nash had brought. This included a folding table and four folding chairs; Arthur collapsed in one of them gratefully. The unaccustomed morning alcohol had left him a bit dizzy.

"Lightweight," Eames murmured in his ear again, and Arthur rolled his eyes.

"Gentleman!" Cobb said, briskly, businesslike. Always businesslike. "Shall we begin?"


	2. Chapter 2

Arthur was very happy to rest at the end of the day. Even though the rest involved an all-too-thin sleeping blanket on all-too-hard ground, he was exhausted enough after all of the logistical planning, of working on architecture, of dealing with Eames's dramatic response to learning his role, that he was well ready for a real sleep, along with the dreams that come without outside interference.

It felt like he had only just slipped into those when he was jerked out of them, abruptly, by a harsh shove on his shoulder. "Why... hu.. fuck?" he gasped, blinking.

Eames squatted next to him, poking at his shoulder. "Sssh," he murmured. "Get up, I need your help."

"My..." Cobwebs flitted in Arthur's brain, and he rubbed his eyes.

"Quiet. Don't wake the others."

"Why not?" Arthur yawned. "We can all take turns kicking your ass."

"I need your help. _Really_." Eames looked so atypically earnest that Arthur sat up, taking interest. "The forgery."

"Yea, will, you make a frighteningly believable woman. You'll be fine."

"I've been a woman before, and I've flirted before, but, well.. I've never had to get my clothes off all the way, even, you know? Let alone..."

The meanings trickled through Arthur's mind, and he slowly grinned. "You don't think you'll be a convincing woman. In bed."

"Fuck me, it might come to that!" Eames grimaced at his inadvertently appropriate phrasing. "Well, you know. I need someone to check on me."

"Why didn't you bring this up today? Cobb could have..." Cobb would be the most businesslike of them all, certainly, and would be Arthur's first choice if something that personal had to be checked - so why... Comprehension dawned, and Arthur grinned. "Oh, you bastard. You've never been with a woman, have you? You don't know what they feel like..."

"You won't tell anyone." Eames's voice was flat.

Arthur's grin broadened "Fucking hell, of course I will..." Arthur's voice trailed off as Eames pulled out his cellular phone.

"You won't, love," Eames voice growled, "because I'm going to blackmail you. Remember Mallorca..."

"You wouldn't..." Arthur didn't even want to mention it. Maybe Eames was bluffing? He must be bluffing - how could he know about what had happened... Arthur climbed halfway out of his sleeping bag, frowning, but Eames stepped back, turning his phone around to show a rather devastating photo. Fucking _hell_ , Arthur thought, that was blackmail material in spades.

"I took it myself, you know."

"You fucking _bastard_..." Arthur choked.

"So you help me out, and you shut up about it, all right?"

"You delete _that_ ," Arthur growled, pointing at the damning photo, "and I will."

"After."

"Fine. And if that ever turns up, anywhere, I will kill you. In real life." Arthur meant it. Rage and shame simmered in his viscera.

"Settle down, darling, I'm a man of my word." Eames walked over to the table, pulling out two chairs. "Shall we?"

Arthur looked at the two men who still lay asleep in their sleeping bags. They had not stirred as Arthur and Eames had talked; they were likely as exhausted as he was. "Fine. Let's make this quick."


	3. Chapter 3

Warm sand, warm sea, warm sun. Rosarita beach, the perfect place to visit to take a little stress away. Arthur shifted down on his towel far enough to work the sand between his toes, and took a sip of his frozen margarita before reaching for the sunscreen. He burned easily, and he wanted nothing more than to lie out here all day.

"Nice place you have here." The voice was sultry, mellow, and Arthur turned to see a simply stunning woman walking towards him across the sand. Woman? She was barely that; still a girl, almost, her face's softness betraying her youth; her eyes were dark, like her flowing hair. A yellow bikini offset her pale brown skin perfectly.

Arthur blinked, realizing where he was. In a dream, with Eames. A perfectly sexy female version of Eames. Good god, the man was a little _too_ talented....

"I wanted to relax," Arthur said, out loud. "And I told you, Ivan likes the Swedish volleyball team type. You need to go blonde and pale."

"I thought that _you_ might like this one," Eames grinned. "But if you insist..." He shimmered and _changed_. Now he was a tall, slender blonde, face still young, but rounder, with eyes that were crystal blue, the bikini straining to hold in substantial breasts.

It was strange to think that Eames was somewhere in there - in that alluring body, making that sultry voice. Arthur took a deep breath and forced his mind to business. "Too big," he said, making 'breast cup' motions before his own chest. "For one - you want to look young, and those are fucking Dolly Parton. For another, once the bra comes off, those things will just plummet, if they're natural."

"A little smaller," she purred, and they were. Arthur gestured, and they shrank a little more in response. "About like this?"

"Yea, good. Now take off the top." Arthur stood, facing the beautiful young girl that was Eames.

She shed her top, and Eames got that utterly right - the breasts fell just the right amount, and the pert nipples surrounded by dusky red aureoles were neither too small nor too big. "That's good," he replied, and reached out to touch them. They were soft and resilient, like pillows.

Arthur shook his head. "Not lifelike. They need to be..." he paused, trying to put it in words. "More like body parts. They have fat, yeah, but also... ducts, and things, and fibrous tissue. They're not quite so... pillow-ish."

"Keep your hands on them," Eames said in that sexy, sexy voice, and the texture changed subtly under Arthur's hands.

"A little too much," Arthur replied, palpating them. "They should still be pretty soft - yeah, like that. That's real enough." He pulled his hands away. An erection was only the natural response to squeezing a woman's breasts, and his swim trunks didn't do much to conceal it, but Eames would just have to deal with it.

"One more thing." Eames sighed with distaste, hooking her fingers into her bikini bottom.

"I'm not going to fuck you," Arthur grimaced. _That_ was going a bit far.

"Oh, good christ," Eames sighed, rolling her eyes, "just use your finger, would you?" She sat on the sand, pulling off her bikini bottom. The man must have studied up on Google Image Searches, Arthur decided. The crotch was perfect - pale, with a dusting of blonde hair. The labia peeked out in perfect pink O'Keefe-ian folds.

Arthur started to lick his finger, then paused. "Can you make yourself wet?"

"Just for you, baby," Eames purred, and Arthur sighed with resignation as he slid his finger in. Eames's bits were indeed wet, and his finger slid in, smoothly. It felt like it slid into marshmallow fluff.

"Firmer," he replied. "Like a throat." Eames firmed around him, the sides of the vagina more solid. Arthur slid in two more fingers. "More resilient," he replied, and Eames obliged. It now felt very like a woman indeed, as Arthur moved his fingers around, prodding experimentally. He was now fully erect - and who could blame him, fingering up what was, to all appearances, a gorgeous young woman.

"How is it?" Eames's voice was a little strained, a little of his own male gruffness coming through, and Arthur pulled out his fingers quickly. This would be affecting Eames, too, as if this whole scene weren't disturbing enough already.

"It's fine," he replied. He experimentally licked his finger, and it tasted like a woman's wetness should - but now that he was out, his own brain would be constructing the taste to be what he remembered it to be. Far too long ago, he thought sourly. "He won't suspect anything."

"Good," Eames said, getting to her feet. She left the bikini on the ground and walked over to the towel Arthur had been lying on, her buttocks moving in sultry harmony, her breasts bouncing just the perfect amount. She picked up both the margarita and the gun. "Never even sun yourself at the beach unarmed?" she asked, taking a swallow of Arthur's drink.

"No," he replied, "never can tell when you..."

The bullet hit him right between the eyes, and he jerked awake with a start. He sighed, catching his breath, the night even more cold and miserable for the contrast with the warm sun of Baja.

He looked over at Eames, who was blinking his way back to reality, the dream collapsed once Arthur was gone. It was eerie, really, to think that this obnoxious Brit had been that gorgeous blonde, that stunning raven-haired beauty, that Arthur had felt his... her... breasts, that he had slid his fingers into his... her... tight heat...

Now Arthur had a hard-on in real life, and this wasn't helping. "Picture. Delete." He frowned at Eames's blinking, still sleep-addled face.

"All right," the man sighed, pulling out his mobile and deleting it as Arthur looked over his shoulder. "Really," he continued, "I know a man can get lonely, but..."

"You know fuck-all about it, so don't pretend you do," Arthur snarled, walking back to his sleeping bag. He wondered if Eames knew the context. He must, to have been there at all - and if he did, he had no right to judge. There were fates worse than what most folk thought of as the cliched one that was worse than death, after all. Arthur slid into his sleeping bag with firm finality.

Exhausted as he was, he fell asleep almost immediately, but his dreams were nowhere near as innocent or relaxing as a sunbathe on a warm Mexican beach.


	4. Chapter 4

They didn't talk about it, about Eames's enhanced forging abilities. No need, really. It was just another part of the job, another trick in Eames's copious bag.

Arthur was not in this time; he watched. He watched the snoring ex-colonel, he watched the placid faces of Eames and Cobb and Nash. He watched their eyes twitch rapidly behind their lids, and he watched as Eames started, waking suddenly.

"He saw the empty lockbox and knew I was the distraction," Eames said, tersely, pulling the electrodes off. "Time to pull the others and fuck off."

They tilted Nash and Cobb, stashed their gear, and left the old coot snoring comfortably in his over-opulent bed. Arthur broke them out as quickly and quietly as he had broken them in, and they split up as had been pre-decided. Cobb and Nash dropped Eames and Arthur at the airport, then took their rickety car west. Nobody would exit the same way they entered.

"Is this thing airworthy?" Eames asked, dubiously, and Arthur affected more confidence in the structural integrity of the small prop plane than he felt as he started the engines. But it flew, and they made it successfully to Turkey, where they set it on fire and walked away.

"Where next?" Eames asked, and Arthur replied that he would go where he usually did between jobs. He didn't say where, and Eames didn't ask. Eames might well know that he was also a drifter, but Arthur had no desire to reveal anything. "Well, I'm going to go to a truly excellent spot downtown. Drinking, gambling, lovely ladies. Come with me, you have the rest of your life to spend evenings alone with your laptop."

Arthur could well have made some unkind comments about what interest Eames could possibly have in women, but he felt strangely disinclined to wind the man up, and so he assented - much to Eames's surprise. Well, what of it? So Eames didn't like the ladies. Arthur had seen so much of people's deep, dark secrets that simply being gay hardly registered in his mind. A secret hardly worth the trouble of concealing - although from the looks of him, Eames was doing a little rebelling against a conservative upbringing, and some pointed lessons about homosexuality must be instilled very, very deeply within him.

It was all obvious enough, once you looked; Arthur had simply never cared to look, before.

He joined Eames for the afternoon, he spent money on drinks and bets, he admired womanly buttocks, and when he was ready to go and Eames planted a sloppy, drunken kiss on his cheek and asked him to stay, he merely disentangled himself and left.

It was four and a half months, more or less, before they had occasion to meet again.


	5. Chapter 5

"You haven't lost your touch," Cobb noted, approvingly, looking around the buzzing sea of humanity that rode the escalators and walked around the edges of the huge, generic American-style shopping center.

"I certainly hope not," Arthur replied. Nash had been, in Cobb's terse words, unavailable for this job, so the architecture fell to Arthur. He kept in shape, though, just as he kept in shape when it came to hand-to-hand fighting, demolitions, and computer hacking. His mind fell comfortably into its well-trained patterns, generating the world flawlessly - from the one-way maze at its heart to the detailed cover that lay atop it, concealing its true nature.

Eames kicked at a nearby wall absently. He had said little when he joined them in the warehouse, and had continued his atypical silence in the dream. "What about the train station?"

Arthur sighed. " _Yes_ , I have the train station, and the coffee stand, and the bike messenger. Want to see it all?"

"Not a bad idea," Cobb cut through, blandly. "Let's take a look around, push the boundaries a bit. I told Gina to wake me in a minute - I have some research to do - but Eames, you can keep looking." Cobb was as good as his word, ducking randomly into shops, bumping into people, trying to go the wrong way down an escalator. Arthur had been thorough, however, and whichever way Cobb tried to go, he was inevitably drawn towards the exit that lead out to the coffee stand.

He disappeared as the three of them strolled towards that exit. Eames turned to grin at Arthur. "Just you and me, then," he said, gleefully. He turned to pinch the ass of a girl walking by; she yelped and slapped his hand, then ran off, muttering 'pervert' darkly.

"Stop fucking with my subconscious," Arthur sighed, pushing open the dark glass door and stepping out of the mall. He paused, blinking in the bright sunshine.

"Oh, but it's so much _fun_ ," Eames said airily as he meandered out next to Arthur, looking out over the parking lot. He turned back, mischief glittering in his eyes. "Here - would you prefer I be a little less threatening?" He shimmered, and became the girl from the beach - the dark-haired beauty, her lips full and sultry, dressed in a tight tank-top and a miniskirt. "I'll just slip into something a little more comfortable," she purred.

Arthur took a step forward, shaking his head, and paused as the interference car rushed past, far in excess of prudent parking-lot speed. "You're incorrigible, you know."

"It's just the two of us here," her fingers touched his arm, tracing down his pressed white shirt. "Well, effectively. Just you and me and your bustling subconscious." She grinned at the passers-by who hurried into and out of the heavy doors behind.

"We're here for a job," Arthur sighed.

"Come, now, you don't really think anyone doubts your ability to make a proper dream, do you?" She squeezed Arthur's arm, and something inside of him snapped; he turned and put his hand on her cheek, kissing her deeply, firmly. It had been so long since he could simply _let himself go_ , give in to feeling and sensation like he did not trust himself to do in the real world (no, whatever Eames may have thought, the incident in Mallorca had nothing to do with _that_ ); he thrust his tongue deeply into Eames's mouth, rubbing her soft lips with his own. She moaned into his mouth, and he pressed her up against the outside of the heavy glass doors. He slid his hand up her miniskirt, and she had no underwear on, which only made him harder; he rubbed her clitoris, feeling her gasp into his mouth and dampen his fingers.

Arthur quickly unfastened his trousers and pushed them down just enough to free his erection, sliding it without preamble into Eames, who choked and gasped and scrabbled at his shoulders. The passers-by stopped and stared, but they were only his subconscious, nothing to concern himself with as he thrust into Eames's tight heat, plundering her mouth...

Hands grasped his shoulders roughly and pulled, yanking him to the ground with a painful thud. Arthur looked at Eames's face, his own startlement reflected there as she self-consciously yanked her skirt down - what reason did his subconscious have to attack Eames?

The girl whose ass Eames had pinched walked up to Arthur and kicked him hard in the side, her pointed high heels digging deep. He gasped and curled up on that side. A construction worker hit him with a piece of rebar, crunching his arm, and he screamed. His subconscious - was attacking _him_?

More and more of them joined, hitting him with fists, feet, handbags, walking sticks, whatever was at hand; breaking his bones, crushing his teeth, pummeling him as blood flowed freely from his nose, his mouth, his ears. He flailed, trying to shield himself from the attack that came from all sides, his only thought being an unhelpful _What the fuck?_

The crowd paused, and Arthur looked up, blinking away tears and blood. Eames had pulled a pistol from the mall security guard, and with her mouth a thin hard like, she pulled the trigger.

Agony fell away from Arthur's body like a suffocating blanket as he awoke, gasping for breath, glancing around like a startled animal. Cobb and Gina stood in a corner, deep in conversation over a pile of notes, and did not notice that Arthur had woken up barely a minute, their time, after Cobb had left.

Beside him, he heard Eames stir. He ripped the connectors off of his body and walked away, unable and unwilling to look at the man.


	6. Chapter 6

Arthur knew the importance of putting distractions out of his mind for a job. He was extremely good at it. He entered the job focused, ready. The walk past the gym exit, the quick jab of the hypodermic, the cover as Cobb pulled the woman into the car; slipping into the car on the other side, hooking in along with Eames and Cobb as Gina drove.

He formed the dream, then stood off to the side, watching the burly ex-husband that was Eames walk beside their mark, snarking and rolling his eyes until she exited the mall in a huff. She stepped away from the speeding car, which herded her towards the coffee stand, where Cobb waited. All by the book, all smooth.

A hand grabbed Arthur's shoulder roughly. Arthur spun away from the grasp, prepared to hit the assaulted in the nose with the heel of his hand - in a dream, death blow was the safest option - but his subconscious would not be taken in by any tricks today, it seemed. The bearded construction worker grabbed his wrist and spun him around, pressing him against the wall and twisting his wrist up, up, until Arthur grunted in pain.

"You promised you'd pay me back last week, you little bitch," the man growled. "Do you know what I can't stand? _Liars_." He twisted harder, Arthur's shoulder straining in its socket - and then fell away.

Arthur turned to see Cobb lowering a silenced semiautomatic pistol. Questions danced in his eyes, but he only said "Quickly. The train station."

Arthur stayed back even farther this time - far enough that he could only hear the rise and fall of the conversation, not the actual words, as their mark argued with her husband/Eames, and finally pushed him, hard - in front of the train, Eames very messily dead (awake, now, in the car), the look of horror on the mark's face, Cobb the police officer running up, grabbing her (and her purse at the same time). Almost done. Almost through this.

"You little shit!" a young woman traveler said, walking up to Arthur, her face upset, and his stomach filled with dread. "You used me!"

"I have no idea who you are." Arthur tried to speak calmly and confidently, but this... this turning of his subconscious - it was unprecedented. He had no training to deal with it, other than 'kill all in sight.' "You must have me mistaken for someone else."

"Oh, that's rich," she snarled. "You think _I_ don't know who _you_ are?"

Cobb was keeping the pretense going - handcuffing the woman, pulling the information out of her purse - but the mood in the station was definitely turning against Arthur. The travelers were giving him dirty looks, and many were walking closer.

"Why don't you listen to the lady?" a middle-aged, pudgy man in a suit asked. Arthur's old coach stood next to the businessman, eyebrows drawn together over his angry face. "I always told you that you was a faggot," he snarled, and the woman spun around to face the coach, angrily. "He's not a faggot, he's a liar..." their disagreement only seemed to fuel their rage against Arthur, and the three of them charged at him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Arthur saw Cobb and the woman disappear. Just before the angry trio reached him, the dream disappeared, and Arthur woke with a start in the back of the car.


	7. Chapter 7

The fallout, back at the hotel room, was as predictable as any bad dream.

Throughout, Gina stood in the corner, fiddling with her phone, nervously trying to pretend to be preoccupied with something else. Eames did not - he watched, grinning, slouched in a chair with his legs spread obscenely, as if it were all a show put on for his benefit.

Cobb asked what the hell had been going on there, and Arthur insisted that it had all gone to plan, so what was the problem? Cobb impugned Arthur's professionalism, and Arthur bristled at the implication he would be anything but professional. The conversation followed its natural path to Cobb snarling that he couldn't trust Arthur's subconscious anymore, which Arthur really had no other response to but to mention that _his_ subconscious did not manifest his late wife to _truly_ fuck up jobs every now and then...

The somewhat thermonuclear nature of the subsequent blowup was inevitable, and Arthur found himself walking sullenly through the streets of Basel shortly afterwards, briefcase in hand.

A hand grabbed his arm. He could easily twist out of the grip, and satisfied himself with considering the many ways in which he could, as Eames drew up close to him. "Hey."

"Don't follow me," Arthur replied.

"I'm not. I was, but now I'm walking alongside you, and I agree - it's much more satisfying."

"No games, Eames, I'm not in the mood," Arthur snapped. Not that he ever was, but particularly not now.

"Neither am I," Eames replied. "I'd hate for anything to get in the way of future profits, and this little tiff has that potential."

"Cobb will get over it. He's hardly going to find a better point man."

"Ah, but will _you_ get over it?" Eames turned his head to face Arthur as they walked, and his eyes glittered in the indirect lamplight. "Your subconscious seems to be in a bit of a tizzy..."

Arthur quickly wrenched his arm out of Eames's grip. "That is absolutely none of your business." He could kill Eames with his bare hands, right now, and thinking of a number of ways to do that calmed him substantially.

"Oh, it's quite obviously my business. It all started when you fucked me, after all." The word somehow sounded twice as obscene, slipping from between Eames's bearded lips. "Your subconscious seemed to have a shitfit about that."

Arthur's mouth was strangely dry. "I can deal with it."

"Perhaps, but it could get quite messy. I have a bit of a proposition for you, love. Now, I didn't enjoy that sex outside of the mall, not at all - I don't have a woman's bits, and I was never meant to. You did." He said it as a statement of fact - and it was quite true. Arthur's cock was pressing firmly against rather expensive silk underwear at the memory. He had thought he was doing quite well without sex, but - well. Yes.

"So what if I did?" Arthur replied. "You didn't, and it's hardly going to happen again."

"Not in dreams, but - really, Arthur, I would absolutely love to fuck you in reality. I think you'd rather enjoy it. If you did, brilliant, your subconscious would shut up. If you didn't, well, no harm done, and again, your subconscious could be conclusively _told_ to shut up."

"Are you trying to make a logical case for us to sleep together?" Arthur could not keep a smile from creeping over his face. It was much more of the kind of thing that _he_ would do. There was no question that his body was _not_ doing well without sex - he was achingly hard, and he couldn't blame it all on the memory of that girl in his dream - that girl was Eames, after all, and she - he - was right next to him. Propositioning him.

"Well, since my endless flirting didn't seem to work, I thought I'd try this." His hand reached out to gently trace the curve of Arthur's buttock. "Come on, let's give it a go. The moment you're not liking it, we call it quits. Full stop."

Not half an hour later, naked and impaled on three lube-slicked fingers up to the knuckle, precome smearing on his stomach and Eames whispering obscenities in his ear, Arthur couldn't have told you if he were liking it or not; he couldn't have told you anything coherent. He was reduced to gasping and moaning and begging Eames, _Yes, more, now_ and howling with pleasure when Eames slid his cock in and bottomed out, then started pummeling so hard the headboard whacked in that deliciously cliched fashion against the wall; Arthur came with a cry and a whimper, squeezing Eames, making the other man come, grunting.

Eames didn't snore - none of them did, it was a distraction and a potential vulnerability in their line of work - but Arthur nonetheless could not sleep. After about an hour of staring at the ceiling and coming to terms with the fact that yes, he had liked that _entirely_ too much, he slid out of bed, careful to not disturb Eames. He grabbed a hand towel to mop up the semen and lubricant that spilled down his thighs, dressed quickly, and slipped out of the room.

* * *

Arthur's subconscious did, indeed, leave him alone, after that. But the next time he saw Mal, she shot him in the leg.


End file.
